“That’s what memories are made out of,” he says. It’s a twist on the traditional recipe he learned from his French-Canadian aunt Yvonne. Instead, Lamothe makes the taffy on the snow and cools it down quickly by popping it in the freezer in individual portions for customers to heat up later. “They planned out their whole trip, they wanted to come to Connecticut.”įor those customers who have traveled a long way, Lamothe has even figured out how to make maple taffy to-go-despite piping hot syrup and snow seeming like critical components of the recipe. “Last year, we had somebody from Germany,” he says. Soon, Lamothe was fielding calls from around the world. People started calling, wanting to purchase syrup or take a tour. They started by tapping a few trees, and then word of mouth took over. He and his wife were all about self-sufficiency, looking to produce as much of their own food as possible. One of the largest sugar houses in the state, Lamothe’s has been in business for more than 50 years. “Before GPS, I had a long list of directions,” says Rob Lamothe, owner of Lamothe’s Sugar House in Burlington, Connecticut. It can even bring people from around the world to the East Coast, ready to brave the elements for a taste of tradition. It’s such a simple recipe, but it’s shockingly good. It’s a taste that’s hard to forget: warm and cold at the same time, the taffy is bursting with sweetness and earthiness, a grassy finish that’s made even better by the cold winter air hitting your cheeks. I first tried maple taffy at the Festival du Voyageur as a kid, although it was before Gagne worked the sugar shack. When you get it just right, the syrup will catch on the snow, rather than melting through it, and you can roll it up on a spoon or a popsicle stick and devour it. The trick is catching the syrup at just the right temperature and then cooling it down just a little, before pouring the liquid into a snow mold. “You can bring it to a syrupy state, or you can bring it to a harder state where it will form tighter crystals, or you can boil it to a candy form,” he says. Over the years, he’s rolled thousands of servings of maple taffy, and he says you can see when the syrup has started to transform. Pierre-Jolys Museum in the Canadian province of Manitoba, and has spent a decade running the sugar shack at the Festival du Voyageur, an annual celebration of French Canadian and Metis culture. Meet the Photographer Turned Seafood Restaurateur Dedicated to Conservation
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